Nuance Communications, Burlington, MA

Company: Nuance Communications, Burlington, MA
Company Description: Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Customer Service - Telecommunications Industries

Tell the story about your organization's innovations in customer service since the beginning of July 2013 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

TalkTalk offers phone, broadband and mobile service and provides the fastest growing TV offering in the UK. TalkTalk handles tens of thousands of calls from customers and people interested in joining each day. They call to ask about products or services, upgrade or seek technical advice. The success of YouView from TalkTalk, Britain’s fastest growing TV service, and TalkTalk Mobile, means that more customers are calling than ever before, looking for a quick and efficient way to contact a the company.

In August 2013, TalkTalk partnered with Nuance Communications to deploy natural language understanding technology in the IVR (interactive voice response) system. Although the previous system was fast and straightforward, TalkTalk knew that voice recognition software would make the customer experience even more efficient, completely eliminating the need to customers to navigate tedious and time consuming menu mazes.

Now people can call TalkTalk, enter their home phone number, and simply tell us in their own words what they are calling about. The software is extremely sophisticated and can understand accents from across Britain, and either route callers through to a customer contact center or offer advice about fixing common problems themselves, saving customers’ time.

There are more than 500 unique automated call paths, so customers are far more likely to get the information they need straight away, or to be routed through to somebody who can help them, leading to happier customers and lower costs.

The system has allowed us to gain great insight to be used by Analytics, allowing TalkTalk to identify trends that are driving customer calls, and quickly identify any potential opportunities for introducing customers to new services that could help them.

As a result of the implementation, TalkTalk saved a drastic £3 Million in just three months. Other proof points from the deployment include:

• a 16% reduction in misrouted calls
• an average reduction in call time of 26 seconds, with some customer calls reduced by over 2 minutes
• A call recognition accuracy rate of 94%, against a target of 70%; which further demonstrates the ease of use presented by the solution
• ROI achieved in just 14 weeks
• An increase in customer self-service of 28% that focused on allowing customers to more easily complete tasks such as ordering products

The system has been so successful, there are plans to now roll this out to other areas in the business and build and enhance the functionality.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do NOT list your URLs below.)